ISGAN aims at enhancing the knowledge about Smart Grid Technologies and accelerating their international development. The main objective of the Austrian participation in IEA ISGAN Annex 6 is to acquire knowledge and develop long-term concepts for the development of an intelligent electricity system, with the focus on the interaction of distribution and transmission networks.

Short Description

In accordance to the national strategic goals and research focus, the focus of Smart Grids topics in Austria is on new concepts for the planning and operation of distribution grids with a high amount of variable renewable resources and the integration of active end-users. Austria has positioned itself with these topics on a European and international level.

In 2013, Austria initiated a new task within Annex 6: task 5 on transmission and distribution interaction, which has been coordinated by AIT since then.

The following countries and organizations have contributed to this task and committed to further support the Annex: Belgium, China, Denmark, France, India, Ireland, Italy, Canada, Norway, Sweden, South-Africa, USA, Global Smart Grid Federation (GSGF), Council of European Energy Regulators (CEER), European Distribution System Operators for Smart Grids (EDSO for Smart Grids) and the European Network of Transmission System Operators for Electricity (ENTSO-E).

In a first activity in Task 5, the state-of-the-art on TSO-DSO-interaction and expected future developments have been identified. In a second step, the opportunities of a "Single Marketplace for Flexibility" have been investigated and a concept for its implementation has been proposed. In the currently ongoing activity, the focus is on necessary data-communication and information exchange between TSOs and DSOs and the requirements concerning information and communication infrastructure.

The interaction between the different tasks in Annex is illustrated in the following figure:

The main objective of the Austrian participation in IEA ISGAN Annex 6 is to acquire knowledge and develop long-term concepts for the development of an intelligent electricity system, with the focus on the development of strategies for the interaction of distribution and transmission networks.

An important benefit of IEA ISGAN is the direct reporting to the Clean Energy Ministerial (CEM) which is organized once a year and to which ministers of 23 countries participate.